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User Guide for BrailleSpark

BrailleSpark® User Manual

BrailleSpark® Introduction

BrailleSpark® is an excellent and industry leading tool which gives you the freedom of the brailler on your
laptop/desktop keyboards.
You might be wondering that, "Freedom of Brailler? How?" No need to be worried, because we're here to tell
you everything about this software!

BrailleSpark® allows you to type on your laptop/desktop keyboards with six fingers, just like a
brailler. Put your fingers on the keyboard, and start your computerized, digital and intelligent
brailler with your six fingers!

BrailleSpark® supports both Roman and Devanagari scripts. It takes Braille input and displays it's output
in normal printed text which can be easily read by your preferred screen reader/speech synthesizer.

With BrailleSpark® you can extensively type Hindi, Sanskrit, English and many more Devanagari/Roman
supported languages only with your six fingers and it is also Unicode compliant.

BrailleSpark® has an intelligent logical engine which automatically manages the complicated routines of
Hindi language such as diacritics ETC.

Unlike other tools which use outdated and obsolete APIs and keyboard hooking mechanisms, BrailleSpark® uses
it's own, up to date and blazing fast APIs which gives you true typing experience.

These APIs are being maintained and developed regularly by us.

BrailleSpark® supports all popular screen readers such as JAWS, NVDA and Window Eyes.

but it also gives you a comprehensive and powerful player named "SparkPlayer" by which you can
simultaneously listen and type your audio books/files.

It's a global player, means you can seamlessly do your work and manage it's operation from any
application. There is no need to switch the player window, all shortcut keys will work from any application
with the exception of internet browsers.

SparkPlayer:

Optimised screen reading support for playback statuses like Total duration, Remaining time, Elapsed
time etc.

Wide playback support for many file formats

Bundled with all playback features such as play/pause, volume management, forwarding/rewinding
etc.

How to use BrailleSpark®

1. Keyboard Layout and Shortcut Keys

1.1. Keyboard layout

BrailleSpark® has same input layout as brailler.

Below is a list which describes all keys corresponding to their dot numbers:

• F=1

• D=2

• S=3

• J=4

• K=5

• L=6

• A=Numlock

1.2. Shortcut Keys

Like many screen readers who use Insert as their modifier key, likewise when activated, BrailleSpark® uses
‘`’ as it’s modifier key for many functions.
Below is the list of all shortcut keys supported by BrailleSpark® including Typing Module and Player
Module:

• Control+`:Suspend/Resume BrailleSpark®

• `+Escape: Completely exit BrailleSpark®

• Dot Numbers 456 or Alt+Control+Shift+L: Change Language

• A: Toggle Numlock and Letter mode

• `+H: Open the user manual

`+V: Speak the version number

`+C: Open the ChangeLog

• `+P: Play/Pause the playback

• `+O: Open a file for playback

• `+I: Speaks the Info of the currently playing file

• `+T: Speaks Total time/duration of the currently playing file

• `+R: Speaks the Remaining time of the currently playing file

• `+E: Speaks the Elapsed time of the currently playing file

• `+Left Arrow: Rewinds the playback by 5 seconds

• `+Right Arrow: Fast forwards the playback by 5 seconds

• `+Up Arrow: Increases the playback volume

• `+Down Arrow: Decreases the playback volume

• `+Page Up: Increases the playback speed

• `+Page Down: Decreases the playback speed

2. Typing with BrailleSpark®

You do not need to manually start BrailleSpark® because it automatically starts with windows in enactive
mode to minimize your efforts and time. Your native keyboard will continue working normally because
BrailleSpark® doesn’t activate itself.

To activate it, Press ‘Control + `’ key. (This key combination is used for toggling the active state of
BrailleSpark® )

2.1 English:

Typing in English with BrailleSpark® is very simple. Just put your fingers on the keyboard as you normally
put them, and start typing according the layout mentioned above.

If you need to capitalize a letter, Press your letter (Dot Number) in the conjunction with Shift key.

While using BrailleSpark® , Capslock retains it’s original functionality. For example if you turn on the
Capslock, all your letters will be capitalized.

2.2. Hindi:

With BrailleSpark® , typing Hindi is also very simple. Just put your fingers on your keyboard, by following
the above mentioned layout, start typing. It will automatically take care of all complicated Hindi rules
such as Diacritics (Matras मात्राएं) etc.

At any point if you need to make any letter half(हलन्त) press Dot 4 as you do in brailler and typed letter after
it will automatically become half(हलन्त)

Note 1: If you type a vowel after deleting a Diacriticised vowel, BrailleSpark® won’t be able to
automatically Diacriticise it due to some limitations of Windows.

In that case you can manually Diacriticise it by using Shift key in conjunction with vowel. Else you’ll have
to delete and retype the whole word. (This condition also applys to Punctuations, Spacebar, Enter and Tab.)

Note 2: To use BrailleSpark® (Hindi Typing only) with NVDA, it’s heighly recommended that you turn off the
‘Smart Cut and Paste’ option in microsoft word.

To turn off ‘Smart Cut and Paste’, Open Microsoft Word,

For Microsoft Word 2007:

For Microsoft word 2007: Press ‘Alt+F, I,’, or for Microsoft Word 2010: Press 'Alt+F, T'
and find the ‘Advanced’ option from the tree view,
then tab around to find the ‘Use smart cut and paste’ checkbox and uncheck it (You can directly press ‘Alt
+S’ to go to this checkbox).
After unchecking the checkbox, find ‘Ok’ button, and press enter.

2.3. Numbers

With BrailleSpark® you can type numbers in 2 ways:

1. Pressing A key in conjunction with the number dot: If you’ll press A (Numlock) key in conjunction
with any valid dot combination, BrailleSpark® will process it as a number.

2. Turning Numlock on with ‘A’ key: If you’ll press ‘A’ key without any dot combination, Numlock will
turn on and pressing any valid dot number will result in it’s numeric form.

You can turn Numlock off by pressing ‘A’ key again.

This Numlock feature can be very handy for laptop users, who don’t have dedicated NumPad.

Installing and running BrailleSpark®

3.1 prerequisites

BrailleSpark® does not require any additional prerequisites if you are using any operating system above
windows 7. But if you are using any operating system below windows 8, then you’ll have to install .net
framework 4.0 first.
It can be downloaded fromHere

3.2 Updating from previous version

If you have already installed BrailleSpark® and want to update your copy then follow these steps:
1. Activate(resume BrailleSpark®) with the shortcut: 'control+`'.
2. Exit BrailleSpark® by pressing shortcut: '`+escape'.
3. install normally.

3.3 Licensing

Currently, BrailleSpark® allows you to use it for free for 1(One) month.
To obtain your free license, start BrailleSpark®, fill your details such as Name, E-Mail ID and click on
‘Request licence’ button.
After receiving your details, we’ll send you a unique license key and validity key which will be exclusive
only to your system.

If you want to continue using BrailleSpark® after your free trial expires then you'll have to pay a minimal amount of 1,500 Indian Rupees.
To purchase the lifetime license for BrailleSpark® you can contact us at:Contact Us
You'll have to transfer the said amount to our bank account and will have to initiate the license request as well.
As soon as we'll receive the amount from you, we'll send you the lifetime license.